Giving reasons
The ability to give a sound reason for your judgement is crucial to the intellectual engagement with this course. It has implications both for the person you are evaluating and for your own development.
The criteria themselves should prompt your thinking on this. For example, for Criterion 1, you might say which theme from the course features in the artefact, or comment on how the artefact crosses several themes. To take it further, you might add how the theme features and whether this is effective.
You have up to 250 words to show your analysis for all the criteria. Giving reasons is likely to involve you in commenting on some of the qualities of the artefact. These might relate to its message, media and structure but also could include thoughts about its aesthetic appeal, humour, attention to detail, inventiveness, persuasiveness, educational potential or its shock value, for example. You could also indicate whether there is a lack of a significant quality, and say what would help the author to improve the artefact in this respect.
Taken together, these comments could add up to a strong impression overall. Alternatively, you may feel that there is something about the artefact that these criteria do not cover. You can use the final box to make an open comment about your impression and your reasons for making this comment.
Giving and receiving constructive feedback
Explaining your understanding of someone’s work to them will help them to refine their own understanding and will also help you refine your own – it’s a symmetrical process. This is the purpose of this peer feedback exercise.
Of course this formal exercise should not be the only opportunity that you take to interact with your fellow students during and after this course. This process is formal, and anonymous. You should seek to create your own opportunities for collaboration and discussion – in the discussion forum, and in self-organised and emergent groups in which you can cultivate relationships, pursue common interests, and engage in more intimate discussions.
You should be both supportive and critical in what you write. What might that mean in practice? The notion of being supportive is probably the easiest to understand. You are all in this together. This course – learning in general – is not a “zero-sum game” where only one person can win and others must lose. When the group works together everyone benefits. Receiving feedback on our work provides valuable guidance and stimulus to further thought. Giving feedback on the work of others helps us to clarify our own thinking through the act of framing it in the process of communication. To be supportive will also imply courtesy and sensitivity in the wayin which we express our views. We can more productively assimilate and work with a comment when the other gives it and we receive it in a context of politeness and trust.
The notion of criticality is more difficult to grasp, not least because our everyday usage of the word tends to carry the implication of negative criticism – focusing on, and pointing out, what is wrong. However, it is perfectly possible to be positively critical as well. One may point out a strength in some work, and then build on this by giving advice as to how to enhance that strength. “I like what you have done there. It made me think of ….. You might consider incorporating …..”. Or it may be that you see a strength that the creator has not made as explicit as they might have done. Encouragement may then be offered to the creator to go further with what they have started. A positive criticality may involve trying to empathise with the creator, trying to see how he or she might take the next steps. It may be about articulating sincerely held questions about a piece of work, and about the creator’s intentions in its production.
Working with feedback
At the end of Week 5, you will receive three (or possibly more) pieces of anonymous feedback on your own work. Think about what this feedback is telling you, both individually and collectively. Has everyone said something similar or are there contradictory views? Both positions are telling you something. Has anyone completely misunderstood what you were trying to do? Why do you think this might be? We suggest that even if a contribution seems negative, you should treat it as though the evaluator intended to be constructive and consider the best way of responding. Responding to feedback does not necessarily mean that you have to do what someone else suggests, however.
You can use the social environments of the course – Twitter, Facebook, your blogs – to continue to discuss how the activities of reviewing and grading have been for you. Doing so will, we hope, stimulate further debate about the roles of such practices for education in general and for MOOCs in particular.
Further reading
Assessment, feedback and evaluation are serious academic topics in their own right. There are a number of useful sources that you might want to look at. The following two provide good links to others.
The website Re-engineering Assessment Practices in Higher Education contains useful principles for effective feedback, especially in relation to use of technology for large classes http://www.reap.ac.uk/
The ability to give a sound reason for your judgement is crucial to the intellectual engagement with this course. It has implications both for the person you are evaluating and for your own development.
The criteria themselves should prompt your thinking on this. For example, for Criterion 1, you might say which theme from the course features in the artefact, or comment on how the artefact crosses several themes. To take it further, you might add how the theme features and whether this is effective.
You have up to 250 words to show your analysis for all the criteria. Giving reasons is likely to involve you in commenting on some of the qualities of the artefact. These might relate to its message, media and structure but also could include thoughts about its aesthetic appeal, humour, attention to detail, inventiveness, persuasiveness, educational potential or its shock value, for example. You could also indicate whether there is a lack of a significant quality, and say what would help the author to improve the artefact in this respect.
Taken together, these comments could add up to a strong impression overall. Alternatively, you may feel that there is something about the artefact that these criteria do not cover. You can use the final box to make an open comment about your impression and your reasons for making this comment.
Giving and receiving constructive feedback
Explaining your understanding of someone’s work to them will help them to refine their own understanding and will also help you refine your own – it’s a symmetrical process. This is the purpose of this peer feedback exercise.
Of course this formal exercise should not be the only opportunity that you take to interact with your fellow students during and after this course. This process is formal, and anonymous. You should seek to create your own opportunities for collaboration and discussion – in the discussion forum, and in self-organised and emergent groups in which you can cultivate relationships, pursue common interests, and engage in more intimate discussions.
You should be both supportive and critical in what you write. What might that mean in practice? The notion of being supportive is probably the easiest to understand. You are all in this together. This course – learning in general – is not a “zero-sum game” where only one person can win and others must lose. When the group works together everyone benefits. Receiving feedback on our work provides valuable guidance and stimulus to further thought. Giving feedback on the work of others helps us to clarify our own thinking through the act of framing it in the process of communication. To be supportive will also imply courtesy and sensitivity in the wayin which we express our views. We can more productively assimilate and work with a comment when the other gives it and we receive it in a context of politeness and trust.
The notion of criticality is more difficult to grasp, not least because our everyday usage of the word tends to carry the implication of negative criticism – focusing on, and pointing out, what is wrong. However, it is perfectly possible to be positively critical as well. One may point out a strength in some work, and then build on this by giving advice as to how to enhance that strength. “I like what you have done there. It made me think of ….. You might consider incorporating …..”. Or it may be that you see a strength that the creator has not made as explicit as they might have done. Encouragement may then be offered to the creator to go further with what they have started. A positive criticality may involve trying to empathise with the creator, trying to see how he or she might take the next steps. It may be about articulating sincerely held questions about a piece of work, and about the creator’s intentions in its production.
Working with feedback
At the end of Week 5, you will receive three (or possibly more) pieces of anonymous feedback on your own work. Think about what this feedback is telling you, both individually and collectively. Has everyone said something similar or are there contradictory views? Both positions are telling you something. Has anyone completely misunderstood what you were trying to do? Why do you think this might be? We suggest that even if a contribution seems negative, you should treat it as though the evaluator intended to be constructive and consider the best way of responding. Responding to feedback does not necessarily mean that you have to do what someone else suggests, however.
You can use the social environments of the course – Twitter, Facebook, your blogs – to continue to discuss how the activities of reviewing and grading have been for you. Doing so will, we hope, stimulate further debate about the roles of such practices for education in general and for MOOCs in particular.
Further reading
Assessment, feedback and evaluation are serious academic topics in their own right. There are a number of useful sources that you might want to look at. The following two provide good links to others.
The website Re-engineering Assessment Practices in Higher Education contains useful principles for effective feedback, especially in relation to use of technology for large classes http://www.reap.ac.uk/
The Wikipedia article on “Critical Thinking” is itself comprehensive and contains valuable links to other sourceshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
Assessment